Awwwwwwwwwwww. This week’s Glee may have been cheesy as all get-out, but if you can’t stomach it at Christmas then you’re lactose intolerant. My heart has melted into a big pile of snowy slush with food colouring in it. “You can eat that you know.”

Clap Your Hands if You Believe in Santa

Brittany’s innocence is the gift that keeps on giving. It not only provided the perfect vehicle for a Glee Santa story, but gave all the other glee kids a chance to act much nicer than they normally do, especially Artie. He and Brittany are a strange couple, but they just might be my favourite couple on the show. I enjoyed all the unconventional Santas, and they don’t come much more original than Coach Bieste pulling down her beard and tossing Brittany off her lap for a chat on the couch. I suspected that Sue was behind Artie’s new legs, but seems like it was the Bieste? Is she really that rich? I also liked that Brittany still believed at the end of the episode. Don’t stop believing, Brittany.

Christmas is a Time for Forgiveness

The Rachel and Finn scenes were much more pleasant to watch this week. Maybe it was the holiday spirit, maybe it was the minimal talking (I like them both more when they’re singing) but I wasn’t nearly as annoyed by them as last week. I thought Rachel’s repeated attempts to apologise were very in character – only she would go to the lengths of 20+ Christmas trees and fake snow to stage an apology. The set with the real trees seemed completely tame in comparison. I’m with Finn, I much prefer real ones, although Brittany’s shocking pink tree was perfect for her.

Sue the Grinch

If you push aside the tiny niggle that Sue was totally, gloriously evil for most of the episode and creepily, uncharacteristically nice at the end after being transformed by the power of the glee club’s voices, then her plot this week was a bucket of awesome. I really enjoyed her acceptance that she was making up for a lack of presents in her childhood, and the glee (there’s no other word for it!) with which she stole Christmas. It was very Sue to already have boned up on the relevant laws before Will and Bieste came a’knocking. The last scene was sweet and all, but I enjoyed Grinchy Sue too much to be completely satisfied with her contrition.

"The Most Wonderful Day of the Year"
It was a nice start to the episode, but by the end of the episode I was thoroughly tired of tree decorating – and I haven’t even done my own yet! Strange that the kids were wrapping lots of presents and yet Puck later said he’d nicked them. Grade B-.

"We Need a Little Christmas"
I wouldn’t have thrown a shoe, but I wasn’t inspired by this. C.

"Merry Christmas, Darling"
Rachel must have spent a bomb on this. It paid off - the set was great and the song was beautifully sung, if not especially engaging. B.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside"
This is such an awesome song. Kurt and Blaine did it brilliantly too. Nice touch with the man on man version, but I’ve done that before myself so it wasn’t a surprise. It could only have been made better with a little bit more romance. B+

"You're a Mean One, Sue the Grinch"
Great fun! Matthew Morrison’s voice is so smooth, it fit very well with scenes of confident, mischievous Sue being aided and abetted by adorable Rein-dog Becky. B+

"Last Christmas"
Gorgeous song, and I enjoyed the direction too, especially the high shot at the end with all the lights and the trees. B+

"Welcome Christmas"
This was beautiful, I concur with Becky and Sue. B+

Quotes for Gleeks:

Will: “Someone special?”
Kurt: “No, just a friend. But on the upside, I’m in love with him and he’s actually gay. I’d call that progress!”

Rachel: “You don’t know how many kittens I’ve given away because they haven’t been just right.”

Artie: “...she’s gonna lose faith in Old Saint Nick and we can’t have that.”
Sam: “Tell her the elves are working on it. Elves have awesome cord blood for stem cell research, but these advances are a few years away.”

Sue: “As satisfying as it is to have been gifted enough rotisserie ovens to roast en entire hobo, for me the real joy of Christmas was breaking the collective heart of the glee club.”

Sue: “I thought you might want to put all of us out of our misery and shave off that Chia Pet.”

Quote of the Week is Brittany’s again:
“Last year I left my stocking up over Christmas vacation and an entire family of mice started living in it. Their Christmas gift to each other was rabies.”

Three out of four tracksuits with fur-lined hoods. Merry Christmas Gleeks!

18 comments:

I enjoyed this one, especially the scene with Brittany and Beiste as Santa. I also kind of liked Sue as Grinch with Becky as Rein-dog and Brittany as Cindy Lou Who. It amused me.

I was feeling pretty good about the episode, in fact, until I saw the last second pimping for the Glee Christmas album. Then I felt dirty and ill-used. Sigh. Part and parcel with this show, I suppose. I prefer to pretend that advertising and merchandising aren't inextricably linked with television. It's there for my enjoyment, not to sell me stuff, right? Right?

It wasn't the Brittany part of it that got to me. You're right that it's tough to believe in her naivete. But I loved the Beiste part of their scene together. I was really touched by her trying to help by sharing her story of the husky little girl. Dot Marie Jones was great in that scene.

Harry, your intro read like a confounding magic trick to me. I was bored throughout most of this episode, and, yes, it so happens I am indeed lactose intolerant and so eat my Count Chocula with soy milk. How could you know? Do you have goblin spies in my computer?

Two things:

First, I think the Glee writers got the Secret Santa thing upside down. If I'm not mistaken, Santa is the bringer of gifts, not the getter, so Sue wasn't anyone's Secret Santa. Everybody was hers.

Second, not one but two 16-year-olds who know the lyrics to a Wham! song? Forget Nikita. Now that requires suspension of disbelief! I recently spoke to a 23-year-old who referred to Eurythmics as *The* Eurythmics, "an obscure Irish pop group who have this song, I don't know if you know it, it goes something like 'some people want to abuse and others want to be abused'."

Dimitri, that's almost accurate, isn't it? Apart from the Irish part. And the obscure part. And the lyrics being wrong. And the "the" part. Apart from that, perfect!

Don't Count Chocula have milk in them? I've never heard of them before, but I assume the choc part refers to chocolate. If they don't then I'm getting me some. They sound (and look) chocolicious. (You see what I did there? I made chocolate and delicious one word! Nobody has ever done that before).

American factory food is never actually made of what it is called. "Chocolate" is really a form of brown semi-disintegrated plastic, I believe. And it just might be manufactured by RJ Reynolds/Nabisco, makers of cigarettes and crackers.

Count Chocula isn't made of real chocolate. It's made of awesome. They're sugar-frosted pieces of chocolate-coloured sugar with bits of dry chocolate-flavoured marshmallows. Leave them in for more than 28.72 seconds and you get chocolate soy milk. Leave them for 2.5 minutes more and you get soggy chocolate pudding.

As an aside, to me there's only one accurate way to describe Eurythmics: "Annie Lennox and that other guy." Any variation, and you're doing it wrong.

(And, yes, I realise Dave Stewart is an accomplished musician. "Greetings from the Gutter" remains one of my all-time favourite albums. Still, "Annie Lennox and that other guy.")

I see. So really, the key is to throw in the words "flavoured" and "coloured" and (almost magically) chocolate doesn't even have to be an ingredient? It's absolute genius.

With regards, Dave, he was born just up the road from where I was born, so I'm a little protective of him. Fortunately, "a little" about covers it. It's miniscule. So let's just call Eurythmics Annie Lennox and be done with it. Let's not even mention him. Say after me "Dave who?"

Dimitri - hurrah I have magical tricksy linguistic powers! And goblin spies, yes, yes I do. It was supposed to be an end of season reveal on my part but you spoiled yourself.

Count chocula will go next to tater tots on the list of US foods I must try. A slushie is at the top of the list.... to drink, not a facial.

Ok so back to Glee, (sorry Anonymous, I got there eventually!) in the UK, Secret Santa refers to the convention of picking a name out of a hat to buy a present for, it doesn't refer to the gift giver. So I guess that's what the writers were going for.

As for the Eurythmics and Wham!, don't forget that Rachel is no normal teen. She's a huge Streisand fan and has had a very deep personal connection to the role of Maria in West Side Story since the age of one. Finn's a bit harder to justify.

Finn is the guy that grew up loving Journey because of his mom's one boyfriend, yes? (Everyone blames Will for doing too much Journey, but it was Finn's idea the first time around.) So I don't think it is such a stretch to believe he'd have some familiarity with Wham! (Or was the boyfriend only into Journey and not just '80s music in general?) Regardless, as Nick said above, that particular tune may be more well known because they play it a lot around the holidays.

Harry, I do feel I have to spoil myself every once in a while... with delicious Count Chocula! Actually, if you ever do get to try a slurpee, make sure it's the blue kind. And that you're on a date. Nothing says sexy like a tongue that makes you look like you just ate a Smurf! (Incidentally, Count Chocula will make you look like you ate a "Gnap" Smurf--that's the black kind that bite, I don't know what they're called in English.)

Jess, that's right. I'd completely forgotten about that side of Finn!

Oh, and thank you, Nick. Your knowledge of Wham and the Irish Eurythmics does make me feel a little bit better.

I definitely enjoyed this episode so much more than last weeks. I thought the songs were very well sung (Merry Christmas, Darling, Last Christmas & Baby It's Cold Outside being my favorites) and they did put me in the Christmas spirit. I liked the Finn & Rachel plot line and even though they aren't together, I loved their smiles while they were at Mr. Shue's house at the end. I also thought that Sue becoming nice for Christmas was a great way to end the episode for the several week break that glee is about to have.

Due to the miracle of viewer democracy (Internet-based TV) I settled down last night to watch the Christmas special of Glee which was followed by the Christmas special of Misfits. I have to say, if you have not seen misfits yet stop what you're doing right now and go and watch episode. It will change your life. It is so rare that you get to find an intelligent, completely unique, and so very very funny TV show like misfits. It was quite refreshing to come straight from the banal anodyne Americanisation of high school culture to the quite exciting world of young offenders were special powers! the Christmas episode of Glee was an absolute game changer for me. It was rubbish. Simply rubbish. It's shocking to realise that most people in the world (i.e. outside America) don't actually know what the grinch is! In fact it's as American as cherry pie… or is that apple pie ? misfits, on the other hand broke all the rules. Here we have a group of young offenders giving birth in the nativity scene just after they have ' killed Jesus' ( this is in quotation marks for a reason watch the show and you will know why!). I must say I had an out of body experience laughing so much during this scene. misfits is edgy and it stays that way because the writers don't sell out. Unfortunately Glee seems to be going the same way as 30 Rock.. i.e down the pan! I urge you will to watch misfits NOW !!!

Even better than the episode was this exchange of comments. Being a Yank who has lived in the UK for nearly thirteen years, I find myself having to explain American food more often than I would like. LOL